were particularly active in Finnish aid activities, sponsoring a chapter of the Help Finland organization, under the guidance of Peter Hiltunen and Konster Marttila.

For a time an athletic club, founded by Antti Räsänen, was active in Soudan, but it was short lived. The Soudan band, started by Pekka Westerinen in 1888, was conspicuously successful, however; it was, moreover, the first of many bands to be founded in Minnesota.

While the great majority of the Finns in Soudan and Tower earned their livelihood in the mines - a few making records like Heikki Arola, who worked in the mines for 45 years - many Finns were also employed in the early years in the numerous sawmills in the area. Many of the younger generation, however, have had the benefit of much more extensive education and have gone on to make other careers for themselves, in their own community as well as elsewhere. One who might be mentioned in this connection is Gust A. Koski, who maintained a law practice in Tower before he moved to Washington to serve in the FBI.

From Breitung Township the Vermilion iron ore area extends eastward to Morse, which contains the important Finnish centers of Ely and Winton, both of which owe their birth as well as their growth to the presence of this mineral wealth. Of the mines operating around Ely, the most significant have been perhaps these: the Pioneer, opened in 1888 and producing 32,928,392 tons of ore by 1956; Chandler, also opened in 1888 and producing 2,392,048 tons before running dry; Zenith, opened in 1892 and producing 19,565,402 tons; and finally, Sibley, opened in 1899 and producing 9,808,202 tons before being closed.

Ely became a village in 1888 and a city in 1891. It was named after Samuel P. Ely, and became, after Tower, the second oldest incorporated area north of Duluth. In 1887 there were 177 persons living here, but 2 years later there were 901, and at the turn of the century there were 3,717. Whereas in 1887 there was but one general store, and a suggestion of a road leading to Ely, by the autumn of 1888 there was a railroad to Tower, and the following year the first child was born here and several scores of Finns arrived on the scene, coming on the traces of John Seikkula and John Turija, who had arrived in 1887. Other sources have mentioned that Sakri Kamunen, Johan Kylmälä and Knut August Juusola were the first Finnish workers in the Ely mines, and one Elizabeth Pete (Perttunen) stated in an interview (in 1950) that Jacob Perttula "arrived on foot from Two Harbors

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